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MUSE / MUSEUM 2006-2023 (ongoing)

 

 

 

 

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On the surface this series is "about" artists looking at art and the art world represented in art magazines; deeper down, however, the work contemplates the continuum of art and how artists influence each other. Since 2006 the works have combined my own painted imagery with hand-rendered museum and gallery advertising layouts appropriated from art magazines such as ARTFORUM, ART IN AMERICA and ART NEWS. As an artist looking at the magazines every month and visiting galleries and museums across the country, it's natural, I think, to imagine my own work on the pages and in the spaces. These paintings take the visualization process a step or two further, engaging issues of persona and autonomy at the same time. Advertising, of course, has the multiple task of conveying nuts and bolts information while creating a certain look or "cool factor" for said gallery or museum, and then lending that look to the artist of the moment. To hand-render that information in these paintings not only acknowledges graphic design and advertising as arts in themselves, but raises questions about how that "cool factor" can actually reinforce or compete with the art depicted.

By taking ads from certain institutions that have not to date shown my work and layering hand-drawn renditions over my own images, I signal a certain complicity with the system, acknowledging that the mechanics of presentation can be as important as the images themselves. But what happens if the resulting paintings are "distributed" in a different way, for example in a book or catalog? Or if the museums or galleries whose ads I've appropriated then hang these paintings on their wall? In one regard the paintings would transform from fiction into fact. In another, it might be like looking into a mirrored room: you lose track of what's original and what's reproduction. Whatever the case, there is a certain power-taking that accompanies these appropriations, one that posits the artist not only as director but as producer as well.

While the related 1998 series NAME MATTERS presented my own name among lists of blue-chip artists' names in gallery ads, in MUSE/ MUSEUM the act of layering other artists' names (eg. Warhol, Sherman, Serra) over my own images functions very differently. The combinations acknowledge the continuum of art as well as the influence artists have exerted over each other across centuries. For years I've carried these other artists' bodies of work around in my head. These paintings, in a sense, return the favor.

In 2011 I began to focus some of the work on specific paintings by other artists, in particular works found in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, whose galleries I wandered growing up in the city. As of this writing, my "collection" includes Grant Wood's AMERICAN GOTHIC, Reginald Marsh's TATTOO AND HAIRCUT, Toulouse Lautrec's AT THE MOULIN ROUGE, Jules Breton's SONG OF THE LARK, William Bouguereau's THE BATHERS, and Ivan Albright's INTO THE WORLD THERE CAME A SOUL CALLED IDA, all employing the curatorial information to be found on the museum's wall tags. Included in this mix is the Art Institute's guidebook, THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE, as well.

 

IMAGES BASED ON THE ART INSTITUTE'S COLLECTION APPEAR IN GREEN BOXES LIKE THIS

 

Since 2009 I have been occasionally drawing my own images onto actual magazine pages themselves, and in 2013 began to explore the ideas through photography. Now in 2014 I have begun to position my own photographs next to images from my own collection of photography books.

Within the conceptual framework I've laid out here, one could maintain that almost any of my own images would work combined with the advertising, and so why these particular images of men and not cats, cars or Cheerios? Most easily put, it's these men who are my muse. But beyond that, having grown up in a society whose media and museums have long privileged the nude (or nearly nude) female almost unthinkingly (just ask the Guerrilla Girls), whether it's work by Matisse, Picasso, Wesselmann, Koons or (fill in the blank), I am interested in asserting or inserting this particular muse as counterpoint. As I've stated about my photo series STUDIO MEN, my goal in this work has been to reach beyond whatever stereotypes we might be tempted to assign men so emblematic of today's obsession with youth and beauty (do we think of aloofness, privilege, a certain power structure?) I get to engage these "usual suspects" on a variety of levels, taking them off certain pedestals of perfection and, through portraiture and metaphor, put them back transformed. Their collaboration makes them complicit thus in our viewing of them, but their subsequent vulnerability empowers us at the same time. Can their ultimate defense be their humanity? Muse indeed.

click on images for enlargements

 

 

  

 

 

Jack Balas, 2023; SCHAULAGER (#2522)
India ink on paper, 30x22 inches


 

 

#2271 EDWARD HOPPER: HOUSE BY THE RAILROAD
India ink & gouache on paper, 30x23 inches

 

LA LUCHA (THE FIGHT)

 

 

Jack Balas, 2023
WAYNE THIEBAUD DRAFTSMAN
India ink on paper, 30x22 inches


REGINALD MARSH IS DRAWING ME (#2412)

Click on image for text 

 

CHRIS BURDEN:WHAT MY DAD GAVE ME


 

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

Private Collection

 X 

XX

MICKALENE THOMAS: A NEW LEAF

 XXX

THE ARTISTS' ARTISTS

zzz

     

1902 The Met (MUSE-MUSEUM series)X
and COMPANY series

 X

 

THE VISIBLE VAGINA

 X

JB at GIANNI PIACENTINO

  

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL
BLACK ROMANTIC

 

JB at CARL ANDRE

 

CUNT

 

GEORGE SEGAL WOMEN 1

 

GEORGE SEGAL WOMEN 2
GORGEOUS MEN


ALICE NEEL

 

ON THE GROUND

 


BRUCE NAUMAN: SIXPACT

Private Collection 

 

ALEX KATZ: BLACK & WHITE

 

ROBERT ADAMS
SUMMER NIGHTS, WALKING

 X

JB at RICHARD TUTTLE


 

EDITOR'S LETT_R

x
x

GETTY, GET READY

 

 

THE FARMHAND, OR, GRANT WOOD'S
RE-ENTRY INTO IOWA, TRIUMPHANT

Private Collection

 


ED RUSCHA: GUYS

 

ANDY WARHOL SOUP CANS

  

BERNAR VENET

 

TRAVELS TO THE MOON, ALICE, TO THE MOON

 


LYNDA BENGLIS FOREVER

Private Collection



ANTINOUS ET HADRIAN, EMPEROR

Private Collection

 

 

AT JOAN BROWN'S: THE NIGHT BEFORE
THE ALCATRAZ SWIM
X

  

EXHIBITION REVIEWSx

OPEN STUDIO

 

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE, SKY ABOVE CLOUDS, STUDY 1



 

THE WACK CATALOG (FEMINISM UNCOVERED)

Private Collection

 


  

JOSEPH BEUYS:
THE ULTIMATE IN CHANDELIERS

Private Collection

JEFF KOONS

 

ARMORY

 

  

LE PETIT PALAIS

 


HENRI MATISSE-- BATHERS BY A RIVER

 

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

  

KEITH HARING:
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

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VENICE BIENNALE
UNITED STATES PAVILION

THE FOURTH PLINTH



NAME MATTERS (SONNABEND)

  

CAPTAIN'S OFFICE
(For H.C.Westermann)

JACK SHAINMAN -- THE SCHOOL

   

WILLIAM EGGLESTON

 

 

JACKSON POLLOCK

Permanent Collection of the Brooklyn Museum,
New York, NY

 

PAUL DELVAUX
THE LAMPS

 

 

 

ALWAYS MODERN

Permanent Collection
Leslie Lohman Museum of Art
New York, NY

REGINALD MARSH
TATTOO AND HAIRCUT

 

LESLIE KRIMS

WALKER EVANS 2

 


KARL BODMER
CROSSING THE MISSOURI

 


  

BILL OWENS

WALKER EVANS 1

 

MONET'S WATER LILIES
AN ARTIST'S OBSESSION


JOEL MEYEROWITZ
CAPE LIGHT (DOWN THE ROAD)


 

 

KISSING THE MOON (for Winslow Homer)

GEORGES SEURAT
LA GRANDE JATTE

ANSEL ADAMS

 

  

GERHARD RICHTER:
KLEINER AKT (SMALL NUDE)

Private Collection
xxx

 

NORMAN ROCKWELL
KNOCKOUT

 

TOM WESSELMANN
HIS GIRL FRIDAY

 


THIS TINY O'KEEFFE

Private Collection

x  

REFLECTIONS IN BLACK

JEFF WALL 1

 

  

ST. JOHN BAPTIST, WILDERNESS
BE THERE

 

PREDELLA SERIES: LOUVRE--WOULD LIKE

 

PREDELLA SERIES: PANTHEON, JEREMY

 

GRANT WOOD: AMERICAN GOTHIC

Private Collection

CROSSING THE DELAWARE

PHAIDON

 

WILLIAM BOUGUEREAU
THE BATHERS

Private Collection

 

NAME MATTERS (MATTHEW MARKS)

   

TOULOUSE LAUTREC
AT THE MOULIN ROUGE

Intervention: Jack Balas @ BruceNauman


  

Intervention: Jack Balas @ Helga De Alvear

Intervention: Jack Balas @ Janis Kounellis

NAME MATTERS (BASELITZ)

 

RAYMOND PETTIBON:
ON MY HONOR

JEFF WALL 2




xxx

MICHELANGELO
SCOTT ON THE BEACH, OSTIA

LOUISE BOURGEOIS
WORKS ON PAPER 

  

Intervention:
Jack Balas @ Art in America Cover

 

Intervention: Jack Balas @ Jack Pierson

  

Intervention: Jack Balas @ Art Basel Miami Beach

KARA WALKER
EASTER SUNDAY
 

 

ELLSWORTH KELLY

Private Collection

 
 

JULIAN SCHNABEL
CHRIST'S LAST DAY



 

PHILIP GUSTON DRAWINGS

Private Collection

  

MY FELIX
(FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES)
X

IVAN ALBRIGHT -- INTO THE WORLD
THERE CAME A SOUL CALLED IDA

 

 

ANSELM KIEFER:
NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM
X

Private Collection
xx

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE VERY B.
( JERRY SALTZ )


 

Intervention: Jack Balas @ Fred Sandback

  

SUSAN SONTAG 

 x

13 CRITICS

Private Collection
xxx

 

JULES BRETON
THE SONG OF THE LARK
  


 



WHO WAS GRANT WOOD?

Permanent Collection
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art
Cedar Rapids, Iowa


 

NAYLAND BLAKE
EXPULSION FROM THE GARDEN
(RED)



 

NAYLAND BLAKE
EXPULSION FROM THE GARDEN
(BLUE)

Private Collection

 

JOAN MITCHELL
CATALOGUE RAISONNE

 

OLD SCHOOL



EDWARD HOPPER: NIGHTHAWKS

Private Collection

 X

 

ED RUSCHA (B)USTED (GL)ASS

Private Collection

THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE
(ART INSTITVTE OF CHICAGO)

 

 

VAN GOGH'S BEDROOM 

Private Collection

 

ALEX KATZ
FACE THE MUSIC

 

 

 

CINDY SHERMAN


BRICE MARDEN RETROSPECTIVE

I LOVE MY SCENE

 


DAVID SMITH -- ALEXANDER CALDER


 

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

 

TRACEY EMIN 20 YEARS

Private Collection

 

 

LUC TUYMANS REGIME CHANGE

Private Collection

xxx

 

 

D.A.P.

Private Collection
x

THE METROPOLITAN
xxx

 

WARHOL'S WORLD

Private Collection


 


DONALD JUDD -- SINGLE STACKS

Private Collection

 

 

 x

BARBARA KRUGER

Collection Usminas Cultural Institute (Usicultura)
Ipatinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
x

xxxx


THE GREAT PERSUADER


ROBERT RYMAN

 

ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST IN THE
WILDERNESS (VELASQUEZ)

Private Collection

 

INSTITUTION OF CRITIQUE 

 
  

THE WINOGRAND ARCHIVE

Private Collection



 

RICHARD SERRA
ROLLED AND FORGED

Private Collection

 


 


ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE / LISA LYON

Permanent Collection of the Brooklyn Museum,
New York, NY

xxxx

 

 

HAMMER MUSEUM
THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
 
 
Private Collection

xxx

 

 

 x

L.A. COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART
40 YEARS OF

Private Collection

 

JOHN COPLANS

Private Collection



PAUSE

 

DONALD JUDD

Private Collection

 

SHOCK OF THE NEW

Private Collection

REMBRANDT

 

 



LICHTENSTEIN GIRLS

Private Collection

xxx

 

CHARLES RAY'S LOG

 

 

 

THE SCULPTURES OF PICASSO
(TYGER TYGER BURNING BRIGHT)

Private Collection
xxx

 

  

BALKAN EROTIC EPIC

Private Collection

 x 

CARNEGIE INTERNATIONAL


 

THE EARLY
NAME MATTERS SERIES
1999

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